Unstoppable
by ice-connoisseur
Summary: But there will always have been tonight, these few, stolen hours, locked in their bubble of laughter and light, when everything was right and the world was theirs for the taking, just one more time. Inspired by the diner scene in Purple Pond.


**Title**: Unstoppable  
**Author**: Kates Master, aka Emma  
**Summery**: But there will always have been tonight, this one, stolen night in their bubble of laughter and light, when everything was right and the world was theirs for the taking, just one more time. Inspired by the diner scene in Purple Pond.

**Author Notes: **I literally turned off the end of Purple Pond, opened up word and out this came. It was inspired by the montage-type-thing at the end of the episode, with the flashes of Cam, Angela, Hodgins and Zach sitting in the diner. I'm still not entirely happy with it, there's just something about it I can't quite get to work, but it's been sitting on my hard drive pretty much forgotten since before Christmas, and if I don't post it now, I never will.

**Disclaimer**: I've just borrowed them to play with for a little while, and promise they shall be returned safely once I've finished.

**Dedication**: To my unstoppable team, halted by the passing of time and the realisation of our separate dreams.

* * *

The floor is greasy, the waitress sagging on her feet as her shift nears its end, the entire diner filled with the sort of tired gloom that comes with the end of another day.

But in one booth, lit by the same flickery fluorescent light as every other, and yet somehow so much brighter, there is merriment and laughter and smiles. To an onlooker it is not an unusual sight – co-workers out for dinner before returning to their own lives, a quick break in the tedium of ready-meals for one and a glass of wine shared only with the ten o'clock news - but to the laughing group it is more than even the vast range of words, in all the languages they know combined, can do justice to.

It is friends together again after far too long, a deep, un-fillable void briefly filled in the only way it can be. It is the correction of a hundred wrongs, the rewinding of time to a place a few months – only a few months? It seems so much longer – in the past, when everything was right and as it should be. When a joke never ended in awkward silence, when a shared look of triumph was followed by the kiss that it promised, when the way things were was the way things should be.

Their lives can never be separate; they have been wound together to form a tight, fragile bond that was far too easily disrupted but can never truly be severed, and is, for the moment, put back to rights.

Once upon a time, their world ended. And then they started anew, forging on in its wake because that was all they could do. But tonight…tonight is truly happy endings, however briefly they may last, whatever the price will be. They sit together, unaware of anything but the few faces around them, because to be aware of the wider world would mean shattering this precious, brief illusion of unspoken dreams and desires.

Because shatter it must. Theirs is not the fairytale; it is reality, cold and harsh and swift in judgement.

And yet…there will always be tonight, these few, stolen hours, locked in their bubble of laughter and light, when everything was right and the world was theirs for the taking, just one more time. The unstoppable team.

They can never be together again, not as they were, and this brief, rose-tinted couple of hours will never be anything more, never be what they wanted – no, needed – so very badly.

But sometimes, in the days and weeks and years that followed, when things aren't going right and all the world seems even more wrong than usual, each will close their eyes and, just for a moment, remember.

And sometimes, just sometimes, it will almost be enough.

* * *

And we're done. Loved those clips. I'm desperate for Zach to come back, it's not the same without him – they must be planning it, surely, cause they've not really replaced him with anyone. We shall see…

Reviews are love.


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